Monday, January 31, 2011

Getting Tired?

Did you ever feel as though you are getting tired of the same old litany from the Republicans?  Republicans continue to repeat their mantra that includes -  lower taxes, government should work like a business, eliminate Social Security, cut Medicare and Medicaid, union workers are bad, etc., etc., etc.  They just repeat the same words over and over again hoping that the public will believe them.  We have to remember that just because the Republicans say something, doesn't make it a fact.

In the response to President Obama's State of the Union, Rep. Paul Ryan made some outrageous statements concerning Ireland and the United States.  According to Ryan, the U.S. was heading down the path of financial ruin like Ireland.  However, Republican Rep. Paul Ryan is wrong, very wrong.

Here is what Paul Krugman (Denver Post) had to say about Rep. Paul Ryan's statements following the State of the Union speech:

.....Ryan made highly dubious assertions about employment, health care and more. But what caught my eye was what he said about other countries: "Just take a look at what's happening to Greece, Ireland, the United Kingdom and other nations in Europe. They didn't act soon enough, and now their governments have been forced to impose painful austerity measures: large benefit cuts to seniors and huge tax increases on everybody."

.....The lesson of the Irish debacle, then, is very nearly the opposite of what Ryan would have us believe. It doesn't say "cut spending now, or bad things will happen"; it says that balanced budgets won't protect you from crisis if you don't effectively regulate your banks.....


....Ryan is widely portrayed as an intellectual leader within the GOP, with special expertise on matters of debt and deficits. So the revelation that he literally doesn't know the first thing about the debt crises currently in progress is, as I said, interesting — and not in a good way.

Rep. Paul Ryan failed to mention that his so called "Road Map" is really a road map to ruin for the middle class -- privatizing Medicare and handing out vouchers- would clearly hurt the elderly, the ill, and struggling working families.  Paul Ryan and his self-absorbed life just doesn't seem to have much contact with reality when it comes to the needs of the American people.